Tag Archives: greenland

In 2015, Greenlandic prime minister Kim Kielsen signed a new declaration over EU relations.

The year was 1985.

Germany was still divided into east and west, and Portugal, Spain, Austria and Sweden were all still outside the European Economic Community, the forerunner to today’s European Union.

But it marked the first — and, so far, the only — time that any territory voluntarily exited the European Union.

It was Greenland, then and today an autonomous country within the kingdom of Denmark. In the 1980s, Greenland was fresh off winning a new layer of home rule in 1979 from the Danes. Angry about the fact that its own local fisheries were forced to compete with more industrial fishing outfits from the European Union, Greenlanders voted to leave the European Economic Community, many of them noting that Greenland is closer, in geographic terms, to the North American continent than to Europe.

In the intervening years, of course, several rounds of treaties have refined the European Union’s structure, including the Treaty of Lisbon, which for the first time introduced in Article 50 a legal mechanism for a member-state’s exit from the European Union that establishes a two-year framework for negotiation from the moment of withdrawal notification to final exit.

Greenland, however, set the only real-world precedent that British voters and policymakers have if, indeed, the country decides to leave the European Union in the June 23 referendum.

Flush off the excitement from winning a modicum of self-government from Denmark nearly 3,500 miles away, the eurosceptic, left-wing and outright separatist Siumut (Forward) soon won the first local elections after the introduction of home rule. Among other things, Greenland’s prime minister Jonathan Motzfeldt scheduled a referendum for February 23, 1982, in which Greenlandic voters would be asked whether the country should continue to be a member of the European Economic Community after becoming a member, nearly by default, when Denmark acceded in 1973.

It may seem quaint that misuse of just over €14,000 in personal and travel expenses could bring down a government, but that’s exactly why Greenlanders are going to the polls just 19 months after their last election — after a sudden September 30 scandal caused prime minister Aleqa Hammond to step down.

Hammond, who stepped away from frontline politics two months ago, is sitting on the sidelines of Friday’s election, watching as her former deputy, acting prime minister Kim Kielsen tries to steer the governing Siumut (Forward), a center-left, moderately pro-sovereignty party, to a longer term in office.

Amazingly, Kielsen has a real shot at winning Friday’s election, notwithstanding the fact that Hammond’s corruption woes are the immediately cause of the election. In part, that’s because Kielsen has run a humble campaign focused on his own reputation for honesty and appealing to traditional Greenlandic voters.

In part, it’s also because the chief opposition party, Inuit Ataqatigiit (‘Community of the People’), has pledged to slow down the government’s push to open up large parts of Greenland to international mining interests hoping to unlock the potential mineral wealth of the Arctic north. Its candidate for premier, Sara Olsvig (pictured above), entered politics only in 2011 as one of two members of Denmark’s parliament, the Folketing, and she is currently head of the Folketing‘s Arctic committee.Though she seemed a lock to become Greenland’s next premier when Hammond’s government collapsed, her hesitation with respect to Greenlandic mineral and oil development has, in part, stalled her campaign.

Inuit Ataqatigiit is even more leftist than Siumut, and it is stridently more in favor of Greenlandic independence, but it has also tried to balance the frothy excitement of a mining boom against the concept of sustainable development. That’s especially true in an era of climate change and melting glaciers in Greenland.

In one sense, you can think of the 2014 Greenlandic election as a choice between two imperfect ideals:

a more conservative approach to autonomy coupled with a more aggressive approach to the kind of mining and development that could give Greenland the economic basis for independence in the decades to come; or

a more aggressive approach to independence with a more hesitant approach to economic development that prioritizes the risks to the environment, local communities and other factors.

Traditionally, Siumut has controlled Greenlandic government since 1979, when Greenland, an ‘autonomous country’ within the Kingdom of Denmark, won self-rule, though the party only recently retook control of government in the March 2013 elections, following a four-year Inuit Ataqatigiit government led by local musician Kuupik Kleist.

No matter which party wins the November 28 election, the vote is unlikely to settle definitively either Greenland’s debate over the nature and pace of mining and development or its status vis-à-vis Denmark. That’s most of all because no one yet knows whether Greenland harbors the kind of oil or mineral wealth that could allow it to become a viable independent nation-state. The country currently receives a subsidy grant of around $600 million from the Danish government (and it still posted a budget deficit last year).

The populist leadership of Aleqa Hammond has returned the social democratic Siumut (Forward) to power — the party ruled Greenland for thirty years from home rule in 1979 until 2009. In Tuesday’s election, Siumut won 42.8%, entitling it to 14 seats in the new Greenlandic parliament.

Its chief opponent, the governing Inuit Ataqatigiit (‘Community of the People’), won just 34.4%, entitling it to 11 seats.

Three remaining parties each won two seats: the center-right Atassut (Solidarity, or ‘Feeling of Community’) with 8.1%, the Partii Inuit (Inuit Party), which won 6.4% and seeks a referendum on new Greenlandic laws with respect to mining exploration and foreign workers, and the independence-skeptical Demokraatit (Democrats), with 6.2%, who formed a governing coalition with the Inuit Ataqatigiit from 2009 to 2013under prime minister Kuupik Kleist.

It seems much more likely than not that Hammond will form the next government.

Hammond campaigned on a program that remained critical of a recent large-scale development law that would open the way to widespread foreign migrant labor and the exploration and development of gold, iron, oil, natural gas, rare earth elements and uranium — with the advent of climate change, the island, an autonomous country within the kingdom of Denmark, has garnered increasing attention from global mining interest.

Like Inuit Ataqatigiit, Hammond’s party is essentially pro-development, though with stringent social and environmental standards, if somewhat less enthusiastic about Greenland’s ultimate independence.

UPDATE, 2 a.m. ET: With 70% of the votes counted, the social democratic (and populist — it’s in opposition to loosening local laws to allow the importation of largely Chinese foreign workers) Siumut, which governed from self-rule in 1979 until 2009, leads in Greenland with 48.4% of the vote, to just 29.6% for the pro-independence, socialist Inuit Ataqatigiit, which has ruled the country since 2009.

* * * *

Though there are only 57,000 people living on the world’s largest island — technically an autonomous country within the kingdom of Denmark, today’s parliamentary election in Greenland couldn’t have more profound consequences.

For more background, read my piece from last week explaining why the election today has such important consequences not only for Greenland and independence, but also the European Union, the United States, China, climate change, global energy trends, sovereignty in the 21st century and the future viability of the Arctic as an economic zone.

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